


Leaving Marks

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:59:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Qui-Gon gets a lot of knowledge and an Obi-Wan.  TMI-100 challenge response (August 2000).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaving Marks

The first three hours were fascinating.  He'd been absorbed by  
Obi-Wan's stillness, and by the long, bare line of him.  He was  
buried somewhere deep in meditation, where it mattered to him not  
at all that he was naked and stretched prone on the single woven  
mat that graced the studio floor.

Other than Obi-Wan's body, there was little enough in the room.    
An incense burner on the floor an arm's length from his head.    
The flat dish and the ink pooling in its centre.  The brush.  The  
calligrapher.  A layer of thinning light that lifted the red  
shades out of Obi-Wan's otherwise nearly colourless hair.  Just  
the hair on his head left, now.  He'd knelt on that same mat and  
systematically shaved the rest of his body with a too-sharp blade  
that shouldn't have been brought anywhere near the thin skin on  
his lower belly.

Those same compact hands had wrapped around the razor's grip with  
shocking steadiness while he extended one leg and then the other,  
stripping away hair and dead skin.  Over his chest, under his  
arms.  Deep into the fleshy crease where his legs met.

He'd rinsed, after, and carried the bowl to the doorway.  Hurled  
the water out into the sudden flare of light with a quick, sharp  
snap of his wrist.  And stood immobile in the doorway for so long  
that Qui-Gon thought that some trick of the light must have cut  
through the mirror on the opposite wall and exposed him where he  
stood watching.  But then Obi-Wan had only shaken himself and  
looked back over his shoulder for a moment.  And when he turned  
back, he didn't focus on anything in particular.

The calligrapher finished his brushstroke and paused.  Tilted his  
head and then nodded.  Measured Obi-Wan's shoulder blade with  
both palms, then picked up the brush again.  Traced a long,  
curved line and constructed the shape of the next character  
around it.  

Qui-Gon watched them from behind the mirror.

***

The next two hours were hypnotic.  Supper was outdoors, in the  
courtyard around which the palace complex was built.  Torches  
shone on the reflecting pool in the near-dark, and insects  
sparked around them for single instants.

Too many people.  Dozens of courtiers, and in such a small space  
they felt like thousands.  Layers of moth-thin robes fluttered  
against one another on long, pale bodies.  Dark eyes flashed on  
him.  Someone caught his arm, and for half a minute he was sure  
he was about to be seduced, but the steady hand only led him to  
his place at the table and settled him there, then disappeared  
back into its deeply green sleeve and vanished back into the  
crowd.

Then there came a soft whistle, and everyone sat, and Qui-Gon was  
suddenly absorbed by the silence.  An instant earlier, he had  
*been* the only silence: a dark-clad man with unadorned skin in  
the midst of a delicately-painted multitude.  Now he could pick  
out each individual's breath.  The few people about the Emperor,  
at whose elbow Qui-Gon currently sat, had chairs; everyone else  
had simply sunk to their knees, so that each marked a perfectly-  
chosen point on the yard's perimeter and faced the reflecting  
pool.

Another whistle, and servants with torches lit up another layer  
of the night.

He was aware of it the instant Obi-Wan stepped into the yard.

That same bare skin, but carved by the black writing and  
illumined by moments of red and gold.  Obi-Wan turned slightly,  
and came down on one knee to greet the first guest.  Strange  
fingers touched his padawan's naked body.  They picked out one  
particular character and traced it, then rose from his offered  
thigh to touch his forehead, and then his lips.  Obi-Wan nodded,  
and rose, and stepped over to kneel before the next guest.

So around the circle.  Obi-Wan offered himself to everyone, and  
no one let him go without touching him.  Too intimate, those  
fingers.  Qui-Gon was always going to remember Obi-Wan kneeling  
before the luminous woman whose plum-coloured hair caught the  
torchlight and cast bruising shadows on the exposed patches of  
his skin.  How she drew him into a deep bow so she could touch  
his shoulder blade.  How he straightened at her touch, and  
accepted the brush of face and lips, but instead of standing as  
he had before, reached out and stroked the bleached forelock that  
didn't quite touch her face.  Only when she'd accepted his touch  
he straightened and moved along the line.

He'd touched or been touched by everyone before he brought  
himself to stand before the Emperor.  Terribly graceful for one  
so naked.  He would have to be perfectly aware of himself to move  
so precisely.  The knowledge of the width of his shoulders, the  
length of leg and arm, the narrow twist of his pelvis, was carved  
onto him as precisely as the calligrapher's work.

There were wind chimes striking somewhere in the depths of the  
palace.  He remembered seeing them earlier: ragged bits of glass  
on gold thread, strung up to shatter the silence of unoccupied  
rooms and drive out any unfriendly powers who might choose to  
inhabit them.  The first time he'd encountered them, Qui-Gon had  
been aware of the dangers of silence in this place, but he hadn't  
been aware of how all-encompassing it could be.  He was afraid to  
breathe.  He was watching the Emperor.

Who came out from behind the table and caught Obi-Wan's chin when  
the younger man would have tried to kneel.  He ran one long  
finger over the brushstrokes marking Obi-Wan's left arm, then  
held him by the shoulders.  Turned him around at arm's length.    
Inspected the long muscles that were offered up to him, and only  
after that the overlaid writing.

"Well, young Kenobi, are you ready?"

Very faint smile and a flash of eyelid as Obi-Wan looked down.    
"I am."

The Emperor turned away from him, then, and swept his hands down  
to the table.  Raised them again and they were full of purple  
sweeps of cloth.  "Jedi Master Jinn, as the one hundredth guest  
at my banquet of the New Year, I offer this one to you."

Qui-Gon didn't understand at first, but he accepted the proffered  
fabric out of reflex.  Once it was in his hands, he was able to  
separate it into three lengths of heavy silk ribbon, each about  
five metres long.  Twisted it in his hands and looked at the  
Emperor in the hope that the man would give him some clue as to  
what he was supposed to do next.

Torches again, on the other side of the reflecting pool.  He was  
aware suddenly of the wooden frame that had been erected at the  
courtyard's gate sometime between when Obi-Wan had entered and  
that moment.  Of the iron torch brackets on either side.  Of two  
hundred expectant eyes on him, and Obi-Wan's calmer ones.

Soft laughter in the Emperor's voice.  "He's beautiful, Master  
Jinn.  Don't you want him?"

He did.  Desperately.  When Obi-Wan opened his stance and let his  
arms fall back, Qui-Gon looped a sash around each wrist and  
dragged the younger man back across the courtyard to the frame.    
Let Obi-Wan settle before he looped the first sash over the top  
bar and raised his padawan's arm level with his head.  Then wound  
the ends around the bar and down around that pale arm, until it  
was lashed from wrist to shoulder to the cross-beam overhead.    
Ragged ends trailed down until the torch flames almost lapped at  
them, and at a different moment he would have been shocked that  
Obi-Wan was still so unafraid.

When he went to the other side, he found Obi-Wan's arm already  
raised, and the hazel-blue focus that the younger man trained on  
him was utterly unafraid.

Only after Obi-Wan was secured did he dare step back and finally  
look clearly at the markings that covered that bare skin.  He ran  
a finger down his apprentice's right pectoral, tracing lines  
until he gradually deciphered the character.  It was a language  
he'd needed to learn for this mission, but he'd been rushed for  
time, and his fluency was questionable when he wasn't perfectly  
focussed.  Even with the hours he'd had to watch this work of art  
being created, he hadn't realized what the calligrapher was  
writing.

Obi-Wan must have been narrating almost ceaselessly through those  
hours.  The marks on his chest narrated his first kiss, and the  
characters that slid down to his belly were an account of that  
first hot, tearful night when he'd made love with a boy who'd  
been his bitterest rival only a pair of years before.  Brief and  
awkward and very sweet, that first encounter, and the memory of  
it had hardened and turned brittle since that lover's death only  
a short while later.  Anger and longing marked in gold around his  
navel.  Lost virginity detailed in red.

Other lovers were written on his arms and legs.  The first girl,  
one night after a diplomatic party.  Both of them in the cold  
dampness of the garden, her on top of him and both of them almost  
buried in the foliage.  The long, tight kisses she'd laid on his  
hips and thighs.  The marks they left.  The jagged arc his teeth  
made in the skin of her shoulder when he bit down.

One-night stands were detailed on his back.  Quick, shadowed  
gropings behind a bar on Mallastaire, hours sweetly passed with a  
near-stranger in a spaceport on the Outer Rim while all flights  
were storm-stayed and his Master was long asleep.

Twenty-four years old, and his apprentice was most certainly no  
longer a child.

Obi-Wan watched him steadily while he read all this.  Qui-Gon  
realized only gradually that he'd been moving his lips while he  
did it, like a child who had just barely learned to read.  There  
was no judgement in those shallow-water eyes, though.  Only  
curiosity and something deeper that was going to steam fiercely  
when it finally broke open.

Chimes from the dark places still cut the stillness, but he was  
learning to drown them out.  They were less important than the  
hollows and secrets of the body he'd been given.  The rattle of  
glass only eased the silence while he sank to his knees and  
stroked his tongue out and along the still-soft flesh of Obi-  
Wan's penis.  Hot and salty, and he wasn't sure how much of the  
smoke-taste colouring his mouth was the ink and how much was Obi-  
Wan.  He bent in deeper, took that flesh in his mouth and sucked.    
Stripped the ink off gradually and found the real taste of the  
younger man underneath and buried himself in it until he could  
feel the dramatic flex of Obi-Wan's stomach muscles against his  
forehead and realized that his lover was moaning and gasping for

breath.

Qui-Gon straightened, then, and faced him.  "Say no and I'll  
stop."  He was aware vaguely of the ink-smear at the corner of  
his own mouth, but couldn't bring himself to tongue it away.

"Yessssss."  Barely a breath.

No man should be offered anything so beautiful and then be  
expected to resist it.  He bent in and took that mouth.  Kissed  
it as hard and as deeply as he could and was gratified to realize  
how wide Obi-Wan's lips were spread under his.  

One of his hands had wrapped around the hard, wet flesh between  
those legs; the other was finding the releases of his own clothes  
so that he could step out of them if he ever chose to step back.    
He wanted to be perfectly naked for this.  Even in the thin  
chill, he was sweating, and the moisture from his body might be  
enough to smear the accounts of earlier lovers recorded on his  
apprentice's skin.  

Qui-Gon pulled back, finally, long enough to drop his robe and  
tunic, and to slide around behind this body so blatantly offered  
to him.  Strange that he would be so much less threatened by the  
anonymity of the acts on Obi-Wan's backside than he was by the  
lost intimacy of the front.  These characters he could accept and  
work around, kissing bare skin where it was offered.  The base of  
Obi-Wan's neck.  A palm-sized bare place halfway down his spine.    
The intimate flesh where the spine ended and his hips spread  
slightly open.  A divot on each side where buttock and thigh  
merged.  His heels.  The inside of one knee.  Fragments of  
something Obi-Wan had wanted were written around those bare  
spaces, but they never coalesced into anything other than longing  
and the faint, chilling loneliness that marked a Jedi's adult  
life.

He was reaching by now with his fingertips as much as with his  
mouth, and the soft, animal sounds that Obi-Wan made were growing  
more distinct.  The shaved scrotum when he touched it was almost  
a separate living thing, and he would have loved to examine for  
the better part of less desperate night.  Qui-Gon let his touch  
slide back after that to the small, tight place where his lover's  
body opened to him.  Traced it for long minutes while Obi-Wan  
panted and gasped and sobbed wordlessly.  Pressed a fingertip  
inside only when he'd satisfied his sense of touch regarding the  
exterior.

Obi-Wan was slick inside.  He must have prepared in the time when  
he'd been out of sight.  Almost too much to think of the pale  
line of Obi-Wan's body twisted around while he reached behind  
himself to stretch and slick his own hole.  Soft gasps in the  
empty studio room.  He would have loved to see that.

Both hands spread Obi-Wan, then, and Qui-Gon pressed a single  
kiss to the younger man's anus before he rose again.  He was  
going to remember Obi-Wan's lost breath for the rest of his life.  
Fire-heat brushing his skin while he stepped out of his leggings  
and pressed himself against Obi-Wan's back in a gesture that was  
half demand and half pure comfort, offering warmth and security  
within a master's arms.  Obi-Wan accepted it willingly.  Leaned  
back into the offered embrace with a perfect acceptance that Qui-  
Gon would have to be so careful with.  He could break the trust  
this man had in him so easily.

He would have liked to slick himself as well as Obi-Wan, but  
nothing came to hand.  Only when he raised his palm absently to  
Obi-Wan's mouth, he was still almost surprised at the warm  
wetness that flowed into it.  The kiss that followed it was  
briefer, but he'd been offered what he wanted, and he wasn't  
about to turn it down.

He stroked his erection twice with the newly-wet hand, then  
breathed.  He was too close, really, to be doing this.  Obi-Wan's  
trust wasn't something to be taken lightly, and if he had any  
sense at all, he would never have considered taking him like  
this.  Soft whimpers in his ear wouldn't have swayed him under  
other circumstances.  If he'd been even half-sane, he wouldn't  
have twisted the remaining sash around his wrists and across Obi-  
Wan's belly, and used it as a second grip to brace himself while  
he thrust in.

Obi-Wan let out a single, keening howl.  He was so tight inside,  
so much so that Qui-Gon wanted to go back over the writing on  
that body and check again what was the last time that someone  
had done this to him.  The only words he could reach now, though,  
were the ones on those still-thin, broad shoulders, and the only  
one he could still read was 'trusted'.  Fragment of some longer  
narrative that he couldn't remember.  It was less important than  
the heat of Obi-Wan's body and the depth of his own thrusts into  
it.  Than his lover's whimpers and almost-pleas and the sudden  
whispered, "love you," that snaked into Qui-Gon's conscious mind.

He found he'd already raised his arm and lashed it to Obi-Wan's  
wrist.  Tying the second wrist was harder, and he had to still  
himself long enough to summon the Force and secure the knot.    
The trailing end ran over Obi-Wan's shoulder and brushed a gold-  
tinted nipple every time Qui-Gon thrust.  So good, so tight, and  
he was so close to being part of Obi-Wan, tied to him like this.    
No hands left to stroke the younger man's flesh, but he could  
twist inside him, stroke him from the inside, make every hard  
thrust across the tight knot of his prostate count.  

Obi-Wan's orgasm took him unprepared.  The whimpers the younger  
man had offered were so soft that Qui-Gon hadn't been truly aware  
of how close he was.  Even while he came, Obi-Wan only panted  
harshly, offering no particular words.  Qui-Gon gripped the hands  
under his own and thrust again, deep into the slick tightness,  
and rocked hard.  Pushed towards his own conclusion.  Never quite  
close enough to satisfy him, and he knew he was being rough  
enough that his lover's body would be aching later.

Obi-Wan twisted sideways in the last second of orgasm and he  
found it, finally.  Ground his teeth together in an effort to  
preserve the silence that he hadn't yet managed to crack.  He  
shuddered, hissed, and then relaxed, pressing lazy kisses against  
Obi-Wan's neck and skull while he waited for his heart to steady  
again.

The Emperor stepped around them both and reached over Qui-Gon's  
shoulder to cut the older man down.  It took long moments for the  
blood to run back through his arms, a hard pain he hadn't  
expected.  It was something he had to move through while he  
wrapped himself around his lover and let his hands cross on Obi-  
Wan's belly.  Obi-Wan seemed content enough to hang from his  
bonds and allow the other man to take the balance of his weight.    
He was trembling almost convulsively, and when Qui-Gon bent  
forward to kiss him over his shoulder, he could read Obi-Wan's  
teeth chattering in the tremors of his jaw.

Each ribbon unknotted at a touch of the Force and pooled around  
their feet, and after that he was able to ease Obi-Wan to the  
ground.  Only a handful of the original characters were still  
legible.  Everything else was smeared, or completely rubbed away.    
Qui-Gon stroked a blackened thigh absently, coaxing Obi-Wan into  
real relaxation, and eventually retrieved his cloak to wrap  
around them both.

Chimes from the palace extended his vision, and he was suddenly  
aware of torches, the reflecting pool, the banquet guests  
kneeling and watching them.  The Emperor was still there, just at  
his shoulder, staring down.

Qui-Gon tilted his head back to meet that dark gaze.  He couldn't  
read the Emperor yet, not properly, and he wasn't at all sure  
what was contained within that smile.

The Emperor dipped two fingers in the smeared ink of the younger  
Jedi's shoulder and raised them to the light, then dropped to one  
knee and touched Qui-Gon's face with them.  First his forehead,  
then his lips.  Touched his own lips to Obi-Wan's while meeting  
Qui-Gon's eyes.  Then strode back across the courtyard, seated  
himself, and commenced the banquet without waiting for his  
hundredth guest to rise.  Someone whistled, and servants with  
torches swept around the perimeter, changing the light.    
Fragments of it struck the reflecting pool and fell back onto  
Obi-Wan's skin, as sharp as teeth.


End file.
